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Part 95
Sitemap --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - More interesting items/ideas for a Bioshock Rapture MMORPG --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - Part 95 --- --- --- Sofia's Redemption (or NOT) : The BS2 Ending where Sofia was left alive by Eleanor... Just because others might be willing to forgive her and NOT give Sofia the punishment she deserved, doesn't mean that Sofia would embrace that forgiveness/chance to reform. She could even spit in their faces at some later time. (One more opportunity to use others, while pursuing her demented goals). I could see Sofia Lamb on the Surface in a Mental Institution after she started ranting about Rapture/her Utopian. Medication with Thorazine should fix her. The "Strategy" of hiding out in Persephone - Of course as Rapture fell apart, things like food and such got short or disappeared completely, which would kill people just as fast as Crazed Splicers could (via starving to death...). So the prison existance couldn't have been so isolated - if there was to be anyone left alive during the course the Civil War (which went on for at least a year). Ryan apparently kept the rest of Rapture alive (with some great effort because of the destruction/disruptions Atlas caused), but I doubt Ryan would have sent food to a place known to be controlled by Sofia Lamb. Hmm, Cannibalism in Persephone ... the untold story. To Sofia Lamb people are tools to be used, then discarded, or destroyed if inconvenient. Lets consider the children kidnappings from the Surface : How many botched kidnappings were there? - I dont recall any SitS newspaper clipping mentioning 'red lights in the water' happening with brutal slayings of parents/relative or the child itself being killed or maimed during an unsuccessful kidnapping attempts. It would have happened many times as Big Sisters werent the most Subtle beings. How many more kidnappings (successful or unsuccessful) were there than the SitS info showed (how many were never reported, etc..) What happened to all the children who were kidnapped, but who were NOT successfully useable for the Little Sister 'conversion' ?? Those whom it did not work for, or who couldn't be conditioned for the task ? - What was their fate ?? (Those cannisters of crematoria ash in Persephone may be a clue ...) What of the Death toll of 'Unbelievers', who found out later that what Lamb and her lackeys said one day was no longer true the next. We only went thru a small part of the areas Lamb controlled and aw a number of bodies displayed as a warning - the usual despotism of the collectivist. Cult of Lamb - talking people into 'offing' themselves for 'the common good' ?? It takes pretty strong coersion to overcome a human's self-preservation (and remember these weren't like Japanese people taught from Childood that they should "Die for the Emperor"....) Remember those who 'offered their ADAM' need not be alive or willing. "Whilst living in Hiroshima, Japan during World War II," : I don't know who came up with (wrote) this stuff, but incarcerated in a Japanese foreigner concentration camp would be the only way Sofia would be "living in Hiroshima, Japan during World War II", OR, can we add 'collaborating with the enemy' as a separate possibility ? (seemingly Ryans people did a miserable job of vetting Sofia for inclusion into Rapture). Remember that the Japanese were very xenophobic, and their militarist expansion phase started way back in the early 30s (when they invaded China). Foreigners were treated with suspicion, even without a war in progress. Sofia would probably have to have come AFTER Hiroshima, and THEN she would have to had spoken Japanese fairly well to do her psychology (and apply it to Japanese psychology/culture as well). They should have said she had previously practiced in Hawaii where there were large numbers of Japanese, to develop her skill, etc... "long, dear friends she made in Hiroshima" : So Sophia Lamb was a collaborator with the Japanese in WW2 ?? "long dear"? Japan became extra militaristic (coup) in the early 30s, and would have seen her as a alien spy - unless she worked for them. - Sofia tinkering with Plasmids and Gene Tonics : From 1959 to 1960, while remaining in Persephone, did Lamb tinker with Plasmids and Gene Tonics on her willing (?) test subjects, and make tactical excursions to bring more supporters there? One hopes she was assisted by ADAM experts. Like Suchong/Fink it is ludicrous that she could ever be skilled in too many different scientific/technical disciplines. " Tinkering with Plasmids and Gene Tonics" sounds like a scenario with alot of human experimentation in which she would characteristicly have had little regard for casulties. Sinclair had been working with ADAM products (audio diary messages mention that), and maybe that gave Sofia ideas and got her started. She was doing her psychological 'pacification' therapies on inmates for the Warden, many who were Splicers. Sofia said (talking about Ryan) : "One man chose a city, free of law and God. " : Except that Ryan's Rapture could NOT be free of Law. You cannot have a modern society (Rapture did last 1946-1958 without significant failure) without some laws. It was more a case of "Free from Government", which Ryan saw as a channel for parasites to gain power over others. There still would be a Social Contract with agreed upon limitations of individual and group Rights (as in - your Freedom ends where it starts interfering with someone elses Freedoms). The game's writers are ignorant (willfully??) of the parts of Objectivism they conveniently omitted which is specified by it for a working system. Again, the writing is merely a forced creation of a Failtopia for a shoot-em-up game -- literature-wise, the backstory would be rejected even by desperate pulp fiction publishers as unrealistic and stilted. Sofia cares nothing for the rights or freedoms of others, and has dictated that many shall die to bring about her delusion. Sofia was a trained manipulator, and because she is such a liar the whole 'I will drop Persephone into the trench' is also all a lie. The fake explosions were just more manipulations on Sofia's part. Probably not solid evidence, but if you look at the way Persephone is constructed (use the cheats to go outside) it is well embedded in the surrounding rock. The amount of explosives needed to 'sink' it, as they went off would tear the whole structure apart and quickly take Sofia Lamb with it. A second thought is : that Eleanor may be just as good a liar and uses her mother's lies to get 'Father' Delta to clear the path to the 'Lifeboat' and to escape with her. - Sofia had been collecting ADAM ("Just for the Memories...) to pump into Eleanor to turn her into her all knowing Utopian. The process may have been hardly started (Eleanor already had many powers of a Big Sister (So then why didnt she take care of Sofia herself ??). The collecting from Sofia's followers and other unfortunates no doubt had gone on for a while. SO where is the big stash of ADAM ?? (sounds like potential for Treasure Maps for the MMORPG...) --- Mike Novak - Audio Diary "Doctor Lamb" : "Turns out, I wear my hair and mustache just like Ryan. So today, I'm spreading the word about Lamb. And tonight, I'm shaving my whole stupid head!" The drugs Sofia is slipping her patients vary quite alot in their affect. The unfortunate Mike Novak did go home and shave his head of 'evil' Ryan hair, but then also eventually proceded to cut off his 'evil' Ryan ears, his 'evil' Ryan nose, and 'plucked out' his 'evil' Ryan eyes. On hearing of the man's actions, Sofia was not overly concerned with his fate, but instead contemplated what else she might chemically coerce people into doing. (If she could convince them to maim themselves, then killing others was a snap.) --- --- --- Ryan Supposedly Erased all Public Record of Sofia's Existence ? : What is this "1984" ? Supposedly making Sofia Lamb disappear, just as he had allegedly done for many other public dissidents ? She was arrested, charged and exiled long before the Civil Wars effects on Rapture society. Newspapers are not shown to be 'controlled' until WELL after the Civil War was being fought by Ryan. Is there any evidence of this 'Erased' other than the 'make her dissappear' part, which may thus be more a case of putting Sofia "Out of sight, Out of mind", when she was taken out of the City and sent into exile at Persephone. Evidence to the contrary is that we see her clinics/posters in BS2 - if she was EARSED, wouldn't ALL of that be gone ?? Would she bother to put all that stuff back up in that particular form when she 'Returned', and started foisting 'The Family' (and her control) on people outside of Persephone ?? Her propaganda would be much more directed towards her gaining and holding power with he new set of lies. SO who was sent to Persephone? 'Dissidents' or Seditious Dissadents or Conspirators and Anarchists?? Terrorists? And 'many other' crimes (if it was used as Rapture main prison/jail complex)?? Persephone would be a place of exile for non-repentant criminals first and foremost - for people who continually refused to live within Rapture Society's law ((and No, there had to be law in Rapture - thats just an illogical conclusion (Ryan said "I" Will Make No Law - Raptures Society would set its own. You simply cannot have a Modern Commercial City's level of organization run by some anarchistic system of 'No Law, No Order, No Enforcement'.)) - How much was Sofia able to 'stick her head out' before Ryan was 'dead' is a matter of speculation -- Do you think Ryan wouldn't hear she was loose and just send someone down to make sure she wouldn't be a problem ever again, or to reassert control of the Prison and put someone in charge to run the place properly ??? No, while Ryan was alive she had to stay out of his notice. - Ryan originally brought Sofia in to 'Control' Rapturites ? Ryan wasn't after 'control', it was the constrainment/'cabin fever' that some Rapture citizens were feeling which he saw as an impairment to normalness in his city (Notice - he didnt just say 'tough cookies', he took action brought in some expertise to try to solve the problem). Actually, if Rapture was more like what they are showing in Buried at Sea (all airy caverns and spectacularly voluminous -- and with those rediculously HUGE windows) there perhaps would be alot less reason for the 'shut in' complaints previously used by the BS2 game plot. --- --- --- Elections in Rapture ? : Ive commented elsewhere about the general lack (or rather the pretending) of American Exceptualism in Columbia with little sign of an elective process/governance (the game writers STRESSED that it was supposed to reflect 'America' of that time and E:ECTIONS were definitely a big component of that). Likewise no sign of the same thing being alluded to in Rapture (perhaps due to a 'full plate' already, in handling the load of game details in those earlier games - add 500 more Audio Diaries and Radio Messages and Newpaper Headlines to try to just BEGIN to explain how Rapture logically operated...) Ryan may have realized (or prefigured) that rather than get the blame for EVERY minor thing someone didn't like, that there needed to be some level of elected management of various local city operations/activities/organization (besides "voting with your wallet" and going to a competitor for goods/services if dissatisfied). There simply would be too many minor decisions for any handful of people in a 'Pature City Council' to handle. Responsibility can't only be handled by individuals, so groups would have to exist to organize many things. --- --- --- Impressed by the Climbing Puzzles in Far Cry 3 : The radio towers in FC3 were interesting, and the idea could be greatly expanded upon for the MMORPG, with the aspects of Rapture's various internal environments. Maze-like puzzles with climbing up/jumping down/crawling and slithering through twisty passages/opening gratings/spaces behind walls, and assorted utility spaces... Such things can be Auto-Generated in the terrain using Combinatoric building blocks of pieces of such obstacles - to greatly vary the 'maze'. With the interior tunnel-like parts and blind corners, you would get a greater claustrophobic feeling of getting lost. There still could be more than a little of exposed girder structures as well (which Far Cry 3 mainly had). Much of Rapture was hidden to us, even though we walked thru the middle of it all. In Far Cry 3, you had the task of getting to the tops of many Radio Towers to activate something, and along the way there were minor goodies to obtain. Rapture's "guts" likewise would hold useful things like utilities to be repaired, many stashed goodies, Splicer lairs, and many Secrets. --- --- --- Toll Roads : Discussion about whether Rapture had 'official' police (ie- Ryan Security or Rapture Security) had mentioned that "Private security" was proposed to exist without an overiding system of standards, etc.. That lead to : How does it all THEN get paid for - if every locality had its own 'security' ? So if everything in Rapture was to be mercenary in its outlook (not my idea of how it would be) then you wouldn't have any public 'Streets' - all would be privately owned and paid for on a subscription basis (so if YOU didn't live there YOU would be required to PAY for access -- AS MUCH AS THE MARKET WILL ALLOW). We saw an example in BaS of a 'pay' elevator (to get to Market/High Street), which I would hope was in addition to a 'free' stairway (you pay for the convenience, and maybe the exclusivity of not having to share it with the Hoi Polloi) instead of that path being a monopoly. Collect 'tolls' for everything you use just by being somewhere ? It is the general inconvenience factor which would work against such a system (and economy-of-scale factors would eventually consolidate it into one 'tax' system - in the mean time, Citizens would face the constant bother of a chaotic 'charge or not to charge" environment.) Ryan would skip all that stupidity for his City (and since HE built the place, anyone who decided to be so absurdly mercenary would find THEMSELVES 'tolled' out of existance by him). - The 'air tax', etc... (you don't get to come here and breathe OUR air for free !!!) - Fees for everything (someone has to pay for the air/light/heat and the wear on the sidewalk). - Get ready to carry change for the coin slot on EVERY Toll Securis door. - Pay Toilets we saw (in NYC it was more to keep bums from setting up home in them), but not the Pay Toilet Paper Dispensers (the Deluxe Toilet Seat Warmers were optional though).. - Shutters on the windows that only open (for 5 minutes) after depositing a coin... Scenic Views are ONLY for people willing to pay !! - Stair Usage Fee (turnstiles at each end - you have to pay to Get Off Them too) - Fees just to use the change making machine ... - Customer Validation at the Bistro counter to be allowed access to the Ladies/Gents... There are reasons why it never got this stupid in the real world (and wouldn't either in Rapture). Token access for the Metro turnstiles makes sense, payphones too. But for every little thing get too bothersome. --- --- --- Analyzing McDonagh : SO Easily He Betrays Ryan ... WHY ? : "Arresting Fontaine" - McDonagh - " Mr. Ryan... I believe in Rapture. But that doesn't mean we always win. Fontaine Futuristics is the biggest thing going in Rapture. So let me be plain: when we arrest that toe-rag Fontaine for his thieving and smuggling, we must make it clear that we won't touch his business interests. We sit on the Council because these poor sods trust us... not because God gave us a chair." OK and what about after Fontaine is proven a major criminal and found to have stolen/coerced just about everything he possesses ? Any restitution for his victims ? And who is to run Fontaine Futuristics with Fontaine gone (no heirs, associates are all criminal co-conspirators) ? When does McDonagh change from this : "Rapture_Changing" : McDonagh - "Rapture's changing, but Ryan can't see the wolves in the woods. This Fontaine fellow... he's a crook and a proper tea leaf, but he's got the ADAM, and that makes him the guv'nor. He's sinking the profits back into bigger and better Plasmids, building them Fontaine Poorhouses... more like Fontaine recruiting centers... 'Fore we know it, Bloke's gonna have an army of Splicers, and we're gonna have ourselves a whole heap of miseries." To this : "Fontaines_Legacy" : McDonagh - "Strikes me that Fontaine wasn't overly inconvenienced by his own demise. On New Year's Eve, his wretched Splicers came streaming out of the poor houses and stormed the proverbial barricades! The dead rot in the streets, and Johnny and Janey Citizen are lined up round the block for Plasmids... anything to help fend off the rabble." Murder/mayhem in Rapture and McDonagh isnt overly concerned. Hitler had been "the guv'nor" too. What kind of logic is this? A criminal is a criminal. And one building an army doesnt faze him ??? The Novel found it necessary to fill in more detail to try to (maybe) explain the reasons - added McDonagh's trying to get his family out, etc... Insufficient/illogical explanations IN the game make him seem demented (and the writers of it also pretty lame). Finally : McDonagh )after the 'Seizing of Fontaine Futureistics) - "I've resigned from the council and lodged me letter of protest, but that's just pissing in the wind. It'll be war, I say... unless somebody stops Ryan and right fast." How about stopping Atlas ? Stop the Terrorists and Anarchists - isnt that a better idea ??? Wasn't it already war ? This simplistic plotline ignores other critical aspects in the situation. So who was then supposed to keep Fontaine Futuristics running to keep the ADAM flowing and the addicted population from going batshit crazy ?? I don't recall McDonagh offereing to take the job. SO who takes the place of Ryan ? Atlas? An Anarchist and instigator of murder and pillage ?? Why has McDonagh suddenly gone insane/stupid? (he should know better than anybody how things go wrong when order breaks down) The Novel shows he has a family in Rapture (not shown in-game). What of their future with McDonagh abandoning Ryan - Rapture's center of Order ? McDonagh is made into the writer's dupe to forward their illogical Failtopia-building plot. --- --- --- Infinite BS Ending Summary - Basically Too-Clever Like Zen Bullshit : You have the ending of having no ending. The story and all the Player's involvement is pointless and irrelevant. Not overly conducive to making the Player care (or replay the game). Inconsistency in logic is no virtue -- except to someone who doesnt care and is out to make a buck. Making believe you are clever/wise by basically saying nothing (Works for Cats I guess). Shovelling out bullshit and naming it gold - it is still bullshit. Nuf Said. --- --- --- MMORPG Quest/Mission Scenarios with Multiple Outcomes : Decisions the Player makes (and their resulting actions) has impact on a Mission's outcome. Hey, you could have REAL Moral Choices.... (or dilemmas like : which person to save - but not both) A more complicated idea would be a 'campaign' (sequence of scenarios) where the decisions/actions you take as you work your way through them has effect on the later situations and outcomes. This would be independant to the rest of the game (apart from some basic reputation-type gains which might be awarded, and direct outcomes like getting injured or losing equipment. Skill advancement is always via standard action experience - get better by doing ...). Variable Plot Trees like this aren't horrible to do on a small scale, versus across an entire Solo game (too many 'Endings' with custom cutscenes the way they make games now -- but then this MMORPG would have ways to create lots of 'endings', much easier). Any 'moral choices' probably won't be about murdering children, and may not cowardly reward all choices nearly equally. But then how is there a 'cost' for doing the 'right thing' (it is a game after all, and you usually just grind a while longer to make up most of the same advancements/rewards). --- --- --- Scenes We Would Like to See (with action options more than the obvious lame canned offerings) : Booker with ball #77, sticks it in his pocket, starts whistling, and walks away (before the Raffle begins). Maybe brains one of the Luteces with it later and takes off with Elizabeth for Paris...) The Luteces (scene with their scoreboard) gives Booker the coin to flip, and he, thinking they are mocking his gambling, throws it with inhuman strength (like the ape strength he needs to jump and catch onto those Skyline things) and splits Robert's head open (and then maybe grabs Rosalind and picks her up and throws her over the side...) *Press 'K' To Kill Robert With The Skyhook* *Press 'T' To Tell the Luteces to Go F@%^ Themselves* *Press Fire Key to Open Fire On The Two Meddlers* *Press 'W' to Wakeup from the Toothache medicine induced Fever Dream the whole stupid thing was... Suddenly the game has many more interesting situational results - than just those common bloodbath via gun moments (yes, they all have to be canned and choreographed for all the many points in the game, but thats becoming easier these days AND player would explore EVERY ONE OF THEM to see what funny thing happens). Booker takes his rag & can of Chloroform with him to get Elizabeth. But then he also knows how to use a Blackjack... The burlap sack didn't quite fit in the box the Luteces gave him. There happens to be watchers observing Elizabeth when Booker drops in. Hilarity results as he is captured and a lynch mob forms (organized by Comstock) to take care of 'The False Shepherd'. Perhaps there is a little gratuitous Trans-Orbital Lobotomy first ?? Disturbing 'inside head' sequence of Bookers brains being scrambled. (Remember that The Luteces have ALOT of chalk marks on their coinflip board...) *Press 'B' for the Battle Tear to pull through a Rampaging Big Daddy --- --- Better Scripting : MMORPG to have 'Normal' NPCs which actually act intelligently instead of being the usual 'boring' repeating/pre-recorded mannequins (which you saw in Infinite BS, in most MMORPGs, etc..), or which didn't exist in BS1/BS2 except as psychotic killers doing mildly interesting things while fighting you. Good believable behaviors take lots of work in game scripting (thats why you didn't see much of them). Thats why the Player Creation aspect of this game system would be a major advance -- a BULK of scripting for all kinds of things you dont find in commercial games now because of their cost. That lame Beach scene - sorry thats not intelligence - its simple activation by proximity. They dont interact with the Player beyond a simplistic viewed playback. Most of the work was the unique animations - nothing 'intelligent'. Might've been a bigger achievement if the ENTIRE game was consistently filled with equivalent actions/reactions. --- --- You are Out in the Wrecked/Ruined/Dangerous Rapture areas, then *ding* you're in nice perfect (safe) New Rapture City Center ? : No, things can still be ramshackle and inconsistant (and changeable) there in the City Center. The latest kludge holding things together... A changing kaleidoscope of derelicts trying to rebuild civilization. More like an Old West Town, than Small Town America. Events should happen 'in town' at 'the Bank' -- I remember way back in UO, people fishing near the main Bank (the moat) in the main town, and they pulled up a random Sea Monster result, which would start attacking nearby Players and frighten the hell out of the Newbies (back in the glory days before they hae nerfed anything that was fun or interesting.) --- --- S.I.G.M.A. : Super Intelligent Giant Moldy Anchovy (not original) : Sigma wasn't Porter - was finally ID'd as a weird genetic mess left in an Alpha suit by a BD who had eaten a bad taco years before. Some people will believe just about anything they are told. Tenenbaum - "Du remember zat ting I menshioned about changink du back zu normal? Vell..." --- --- Vacuum Bots : pix DLCs usually introduce no new game mechanisms, as they are only meant to generate extra cash for the game company with minimized expense (so just about everything is reused from the original game). These 'McClendon' Vac-bots were pretty much just static containers. SO we didn't see the McClendon Vacuum Bot wandering around Minervas Den, or even one scene of menacing suddenness as one unexpectedly came through an opening door or suddenly lurch at you from the shadows. (Or one come slowly down a hallway towards you and only when it neared did you see the pile of explosives strapped to its back...) Seriously how was it for a few things like that ? --- --- Lockboxes - in the MMORPG That'll Be Gone : Bodies/corpses are objects, and we are going for more realism here. Maybe Splicers still don't significantly deteriorate (as corpses) because of ADAM side-effects (some catalytic regeneration ?). Smaller bodycounts in the MMORPG ... fewer to pile up (they had to make the bodies disappear in those games to not overload their scene rendering.) You can happen upon the scene of some other Players or NPCs 'adventuring', but *Look!* they forgot to haul the corpse back to the recycling center for ADAM repatriation. Lucky You gets the 50 clams - just need to go get the wheelbarrow ... Half the fun will be going through a dead Splicers/Corpses pockets to see what goodies they might have (after dragging the body back to a safe place where you can do that at your leisure.) The Vita-Chambers mostly stopped working years ago, so those rectangular 'corpse' markers just dont get placed any more. --- --- Fontaine - Just a Parasite : Ryan ran Rapture the way he said he was going to (and even battled Parasites in defense of all the Peoples hard work). We really are not shown what all he did even during the Civil War -- if people were not starving/freezing to death as Fonatiane/Atlas disrupted things, it was probably because Ryan kept things running). Fontaine was going to leave and take his evil to the Surface, so he didn't care about what happened to Rapture. All those who mistakenly followed him, whom he had no further use for, would be left to die. Atlas pandering to losers who wanted to change the rules to take what they never worked for, deluded about "what they deserved". Parasites assume that everyone HAS to cater to losers. That is todays expectation, and was not too prevalent in people (Americans) who supposedly came out of the Depression and WW2 (AND Rapture People were supposed to have been people originally picked for Rapture FOR believing the OPPOSITE of Parasitism, and being the go-getters tired of being held back by such dead wood and those who pandered to them). But again, Failtopia HAS to Fail (whether it makes sense or not) - BECAUSE the plot says so. --- --- Shoulda Stuck to the Steampunky Fantasy stuff instead of badly done Science : Better themey explanations for the magic-like effects : - Fortified Steam - Tesla whatever (lotsa sparky things) - Aether technology and the Phlogisten Theory - Brass Googles and lots and lots of Gears - Mystic Crystals and Relics - Radium powered (heck, they still were using that for Flash Gordon in the 30s) --- --- --- D&D Columbia A game nerds in Rapture played about a fantasy flying city with all kinds of magical stuff and weird beings. F&F - Firearms and Floatings --- --- Columbia Turned Out to be Just so much Regurgitation/Redo from Bioshock : Almost exactly the same elements except done in an inferior way ... We Coulda Had : - Frankenstein Monster objects seen in the Columbia Nightmare world/freakshow - 'Paris' full of werewolves and vampires (and pinheads) ? - Another deluded fantasy simulation -- Booker is Insane (what fun !! - now a reason for the shooting gallery style game...) - Jetpacks, "We'll give you jetpacks!!!" they said... (and "where is my flying car?" ) - The Sky Line seen in the Trailers (and a huge cityscape you could actually reach all within the same level) might have been good, but they couldn't manage to do it (and I don't recall them giving back the awards for the game they pretended it would be, but never made). Worse they Afflicted BaS Rapture with that nonsensical Pneumo Tube (like a dog eating its own reasty vomit and then regurgitating it again....) WE coulda had a whole segment of the game exploring all the different paths/parts of the Floating City. - An Actual Racist Police State, instead of that cottony fake drivel parading stereotypical 'oppressed' minorities and workers, and their meanie bosses and 'ebil' white people. The 'Vox' (properly) would have been a hunted underground movement, too afraid to do ANYTHING in public (except plant bombs) and widespread informers systematicly turning them in. And that religion Crap? Cult weirdness like that has little to do with religion in America (Levine has similar dim ideas about American history as well). --- --- --- Farmville in Rapture : Send your friend a Sheep or Ask them to let you borrow their Flybot Auto-Farmer ... 'Social Game' interactions type mini-games. All the usual pretty decorative trash to make it look like something is actually there. The bottom line is how much real food and other viable products you can produce for the City. (Gives Player something to do while they are at work...) Tend your Slime Crop and Plant your Taters ... The mutant rats are growing nicely this year. --- --- Big Band Music : Why was Rapture stuck in the 20s/30s? when WW2 music was quite popular ? May have something to do with copyrights NOT running out (those are alot of older songs they used in-game) and them trying to match the Art Deco Era which largely ended during WW2, AND the 20s 30s were Ryan's formative years -- and there is that phenomenon where past a certain age just about everything New "sounds like crap" to most people. A few talented "Player Creators" might come up with composing their own Big Band sounding music. --- --- The Jump Scare : Now a cliche. Need creativity instead of every other Mission scenario having one of these generic type events. Need creative variants for the 'Threatened Jump Scare', And the 'Noise in the wall', and the 'blind corner'. Need the 'Jump Scare' Blooper Reel of all the things that go wrong (when Splicers mess up their little 'joke' ... Trips and falls, doors closing unexpectedly, forgetting their 'words', trap activation failing with resulting cursing and realizing everyone is now looking at them and bringing up their guns... --- --- --- . . .